We are officially great grand parents. His name is Grover, and he arrived at our house with little warning.

I hate to admit this about my own relatives – but honestly – He’s a bird brain…

Of course he’s forgiven – because he is a bird. A Cockatiel to be exact – which is a small parrot. He’s gray with large orange feather spots over his ears, he’s just a bit over 2 months old, fully weaned – and very very cute. For those wondering about him flying away – his wings have been clipped – something you need to do yearly apparently. So he can ‘glide’ to the floor, but he’s not going to fly up in a tree. If his wings weren’t clipped – we’d need a bird leach.. That just sound really too weird.

Why are we in charge of Grover you ask? Well – my Kids left for Greece (Canadians can travel to Europe, even though Americans can not) – and apparently we were top of a very short list of ‘bird-sitters’, if there is even such a list.

Grove is going to be our house guest for 2 full weeks. And he came fully equipped – with a cage the size of a small closet, lots of food bowls, a play ground that my grand-daughter made for him out of recycled stuff like cardboard boxes, ribbons and cord and empty paper towel rolls. It has different heights, lots of different textures, and is adorable.

The best news – unlike my kids at this age – he sleeps thru the night… That’s very cool. And he doesn’t consider being banished to his ‘room’ (his very very large cage) a punishment… also heads over any kid I’ve had to be in charge of for 2 weeks – including my own.

And as mentioned before – he’s very cute.

He pretty much came finger and perched trained – so I quickly added towel training to his repertory. And I’m working on more tricks.

The short list of quick tricks for Cockatiels is Bow, Up, Down, High Five, Eat, Turn around, wings out and of course – eventually – talking.

I’ve got him coming ‘up’ onto my finger basically every time I guesture and say up. And similarly he gets down when I guesture and roll him off my hand towards the table. So that’s two down.

Bow is also coming along well. He loves being scratched behind the ears – so using the word Bow with a motion towards his head works perfectly.

I’ve been less successful so far with High Five. The idea is that he puts one leg on my hand and then pulls it back. High Five! (in his case – it’s a High Four since he only has 4 fingers/claws/foot parts… but I digress). But it’s a word and a motion and for Grover – an action.

As for feeding Grover – that’s actually fun. He can eat anything except avocados and Chocolate – and he adores the part of grapes without the grapes on it – the vine.. He’s quite the vine-a-holic! And kernels of cooked corn are also a treat. And he can spend hours making holes in cardboard – egg cartons being a huge speciality.

One big difference between Cockatiels and Larger full-sized Parrots is the noise volume. Grover will chirp sweetly at us to remind us he’s upstairs if he hears us arrive – and he doesn’t like it if we raise our voices – so he’ll chirp then as well – but that famous loud screech.. haven’t heard that yet thank goodness.

One other fun thing – if I’m typing on my ipad – Grove loves to come and watch. Which is fine until he starts walking on the keyboard. My spelling is bad enough – I don’t need a bird brains help!

Since we don’t want Grover to stay alone more than he must – say while we are working, He has been going on our 2 mile walks every day. I must say we do get a lot of attention – ‘Mom – that’s a bird!’ Is a frequent one. Grover just ignores most folks, but when bicycles speed past he gets tall and thin and his head feathers shoot straight up. After the third or fourth bike – he stopped reacting so strongly. You can, apparently, get used to anything.

Bedtime for Grover is simple. Around 6:30-7:00 he gets carried up to his clean cage, given seeds in one bowl, water in another and maybe some treats in a third and told – ‘Good Night’. The room is dark, but has a night light – and he quickly goes to sleep. Or at least – stops moving around… I don’t dare check to see if he’s really asleep.

Well – that’s the news on my first Great Grand-kid. I just thought I’d share something fun in these days of too many lines and masks and sanitizer.

Sighing off to see if I can make a video of Grover doing tricks… so far I’m batting zero on that effort.

The Soup Lady